Better Living Through Interaction

[xthread]

A long time ago, malabar asked me, with more than a little bit of incredulity, 'Do you really believe that you can make people more interesting just by talking to them?' 'Well, basically,' I replied. About a year later she came back to me and said that based on her experiences over the intervening year with the individual about whom we'd been speaking, she was now prepared to cede the point, though it still made her twitchy. Now, fast forward to today, when kamileon forwarded me this positively amazing science snack, ganked from being_angyl (who happens to be a perfectly delightful person who I simply don't know particularly well). Short form: Primate neurons regenerate. (That's you and me, bub, for our home audience, and flies in the face of what we thought we knew about neuroanatomy just ten short years ago). Furthermore, anti-depressants don't work the way most of us think they do. Finally, and here's the really interesting bit, putting people into a higher data density, lower stress environment almost certainly actually improves the functioning of their brain, and reduces depression, btw.

So all of you who've been self-medicating by making your lives less stressful, more varied, and more interesting? Keep up the good work. Stress sucks the life out of the brain, and variety puts it back in.

On an unrelated note, we may be very close to a treatment for Parkinson's Disease. And you should read the article.

Comments

[malabar.livejournal.com]

Hey, I had had very little experience with people who actually listened to me at that point.:) The papers on primate regen are certainly tantalising, but some of the methodology isn't fantastic: several different species of primate being used and compared to each other, small sample sizes, etc. Working with primates is so fraught with difficulty that I'm willing to believe that these are the best results they can get, but my internal journal editor would say the jury's still out.

[judith-s.livejournal.com]

putting people into a higher data density, lower stress environment almost certainly actually improves the functioning of their brain, and reduces depression

If that doesn't sound like an excuse for more parties, I don't know what does. We're doing First Tuesday, and shall try for high data density & low stress. What will your contribution be?

[memegarden.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for posting this!

[(Anonymous)]

So I was actually hearing my brain die at boring but stressful jobs...

This makes me even more excited about doing science outreach to underserved schools--get the cool stuff in there early! It also matches a description of play that I came up with a while ago: experimentation in a low stakes environment. The experimentation provides the novelty and exercise; the low-stakes environment keeps it low stress.

[hydrolagus.livejournal.com]

that anonymous comment was me...screwed up on the login somehow.

[cat-herder.livejournal.com]

The message seems to follow the old adage that variety is the spice of life. Perhaps the reason why so many non-poor (ie middle class) people get depressed is because we all seem to be overspecializing, take jobs simply for the income, or fall into old habits. Back in times of yore, people did a lot of different things with their time during the day. I still shudder at my dotcom days where we were all in the office at least 12 hours a day, hunched over our computers. No wonder the more well-adjusted people started doing goofy stuff like bringing remote controlled cars and airplanes into the office.

[darthsunshine.livejournal.com]

Thank you ever so much for passing on the link to this article. It was quite a timely read for me today.

[judith-s.livejournal.com]

Not only a truly spiff article, but a new source of science news (www.seed.com). Thanks!

[johnromkey.livejournal.com]

That's a great article! Thanks for posting it.